Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco (born 10 May 1992), popularly known as Charice Pempengco, is a young Filipina singer who wowed the world via her exposure through Youtube and through her first American televison first appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show on 19 December 2007. She placed third in the first season of Little Big Star in 2005.

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Early life

Charice was born in Cabuyao, Laguna, Philippines to Ricky Pempengco and Racquel Relucio. He has a younger brother named Carl. At an early age, her parents separated. Charice had been estranged to his father since.

Known as "Cha" to her friends, she inherited her amazing singing voice from her mother and aunt. At the age of four she already liked to sing, but started singing professionally at the age of 7. She became popular at age 12 when she joined Little Big Star shown on ABS-CBN 2 in 2005. She was eliminated early but was picked as a wild card, thereby re-entering the competition. Though she always got high scores, she placed third in the grand finals.

Career

Charice's big break started on the internet when the FalseVoice channel of YouTube posted her Little Big Star performance of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and her face-off with Bianca Ryan, winner of U.S. reality show America's Got Talent. The viewers thought her performance was fake because of her unbelievable vocal prowess. These videos caught the attention of Ten Songs Productions, a record company in Sweden, that they brought Charice to Stolckholm, Sweden to record some songs. She recorded 7 songs including the Whitney Houston's hit, "I Will Always Love You," Kate Bush's "Running up that Hill," Shakespeare Sisters's "Stay," and four original songs, "Amazing," "All The Money in the World," "It Can Only Get Better," and "Born to Love You Forever." This album has not yet been released.

In October 2007, she was invited by Seoul Broadcasting System, one of the biggest television networks in South Korea, to perform on a talent show called Star King. She amazed the audience with her rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." When the viewers posted her Star King performance on YouTube, Cha found her way onto American television. TV network E!'s The Daily Ten featured her Star King performance with the headline, "A Star Is Born" on 14 November 2007 and then crowned her as the "Queen of the Week" on the Hollywood Royalty segment, this time with the headline, "A Queen Is Born" on November 16. Pempengco's performance on Star King was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on its 28 November 2007 episode, in which Ellen showed web videos of different people she would like to have as guests on the show. After showing the video, DeGeneres did a standing ovation and imitated Pempengco's gestures. She later personally invited the young singer to perform on the show.

On 19 December 2007, Charice sang her already popular "And I Am Telling You, I'm Not Going" and "I Will Always Love You" on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She got a standing ovation.

On 22 June 2010, it was reported that Pempengco became part of the second season of popular American musical series Glee, where she portrayed the role of Filipina student Sunshine Corazon.

'Note to God' single

On 18 May 2009, Pempengco debuted her first international single "Note to God" at Oprah Winfrey's show. The song was written by Grammy award-winner Diane Warren and produced by David Foster. It became an instant hit both on iTunes and Amazon after this debut performance.

"Note to God" peaked at number 44 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Music Charts at the end of its first week. This places Pempengco as the first Filipino solo performing artist to enter the chart since Jocelyn Enriquez's “Do You Miss Me” in the 1990s.

Billboard Hit Chart

Pyramid, Charice's promotional single from her international self-titled debut album, topped the Billboard Dance/Club Play Songs chart when it was released on 14 May 2010. The song also peaked at no. 56 in the Hot 100 chart.

Death of father

On the evening of 31 October 2011, Pempengco's father Ricky was killed allegedly after a drinking session in San Pedro, Laguna. Witnesses and police investigators tagged a certain Angel Capili as suspect to Ricky's death.

Her father's death caused the cancellation of Pempengco's Singapore leg of the David Foster and Friends Tour. The incident prominently unearthed Pempengco's estranged relationship with her father and her relatives on her paternal side.

Top perfomances

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